The Dark Side
by Thanos6
Summary: Superman and Batman hope to discover the whereabouts of the Joker by interrogating another villain, the teleporting Warp... One-shot


"Why'd you do it, LaSalle? Why'd you help the Joker escape? What was in it for you?"

Emil LaSalle, better known by his supervillain _nom de guerre_ Warp, glared at his interrogator from under the golden metallic hood of his armor. He was shackled to a chair in a deep sub-basement of the Justice League's Hall complex in Washington, D.C, waiting to be secured for transport to a sufficiently equipped jail. Both the chair and the room it was in had been specially designed by Ted Kord to prevent teleportation, such as Warp's method of mentally opening portals.

"Superman, you wound me, and I do not mean just with your fist." Despite the situation he was in, LaSalle forced himself to crack a smile. The back of his head still ached from the Kryptonian's blow that had stolen his consciousness and ended his most recent escapade. "I did nothing to help that maniacal clown." His indignation was wrapped in a thick French accent. His eyes flickered briefly to a dark corner of the room, where a pair of eyes studied him carefully from beneath a pointed cowl.

Good cop, bad cop, indeed.

Superman continued his pacing around the room. "Batman and I both saw you. You cast your warping field upon the Joker and helped him escape. Now tell us, if that's not helping him escape, what is it?"

Warp sniffed disdainfully. "Believe it or not, _mon ami_, it was a favor to you."

The looks he received spoke volumes.

The supervillain nodded toward the small table in front of him and the glass of water upon it. "Would you mind?" The Kryptonian took the glass and pressed it against LaSalle's lips, allowing him a brief drink.

"Now continue."

Warp licked the last of the cool water from his lips. "I know you value life, _monsieur_, as do your comrades, even your brooding friend there in the corner. You always take us alive, no matter how much trouble that causes you in the long run. But despite this, sometimes, you cannot. Sometimes your foe is so strong, so powerful, that there is no prison that can hold them. I am thinking of that Anti-Monitor we all battled together, or of course Doomsday. This is the case, _non_?"

Superman looked distinctly uncomfortable as he replied. "This is true, of course, though we try to keep those cases to an absolute minimum. What's your point?"

"My point is this. The Joker is just as impossible to keep imprisoned on Earth. Every time he's sent to Arkham, I'm told they devise a new security method to keep him there. It works perfectly until he decides he wants to leave. He makes me look like an amateur at escape. And I would not be shocked if I was told that his bodycount exceeds that of one of Doomsday's rampages. And yet you continue to let _him_ live, for some inexplicable reason." Warp shrugged as best he could with his arms chained. "I simply solved your dilemma for you."

With speed worthy of Jay Garrick, Batman was suddenly at his side, his gloved hand pressing into the supervillain's throat. "What. Did. You. Do."

"Batman." With a fraction of his mighty strength, Superman removed his teammate's hand from Warp's neck, and then looked down at the coughing, sputtering man. "You'd be wise to answer his question, though."

LaSalle coughed for another second or two until he caught his breath. "I did not teleport him into the sun or a black hole like your friend seems to think, as much as he would deserve it. I have enough trouble without causing myself more by doing you a favor that only earns me a murder charge. I simply sent him to one of the most inescapable places there is. And it is, shall we say, a win-win. I cannot imagine that he will ever be able to escape. But he will certainly try, and in doing so, I imagine he will cause much trouble for the native population and its ruler, someone else that you are not fond of."

Superman asked "Where did you send him?" at the same moment as Batman asked "Why did you do this?" Warp chuckled momentarily, and turned his head toward Batman.

"I shall answer your question first, _mon ami_. And there are two answers to it. The first is that I do not like the man. He repulses me."

"LaSalle, you've belonged to groups with names like the Brotherhood of Evil and the Society of Sin," the dark knight countered. "You'll have to pardon me if I find these standards a little hard to believe."

Warp shrugged again. "I am not claiming my hands are clean, or that I am turning over a new leaf. But…" His gaze seemed to un-focus. "As you'll remember, there was that time when a large number of us 'villains' were exiled to a distant planet. During that time, I saw far too much of the Joker up close. Even monsters can have monsters. At the end of that exile, when my colleagues believed me dead, my powers experienced a temporary malfunction. I found myself teleported all over the universe, again and again. Random destinations, with random periods of stability before I warped again. One of my stopovers was home to another face of pure evil, just as monstrous but in opposition to the Joker." He shuddered softly. "I may be a criminal, but that is not the same as the…as the dark side."

"And your second answer?"

LaSalle smirked softly. "He's bad on business. He gives everyone in our…noble profession…a bad name. It's hard to get bystanders or hostages to comply with your demands when they think you'll just slaughter them indiscriminately whether they cooperate or not. That's his reputation at work."

"How very charitable of you," Superman said. "But my question remains. Where did you send him?"

The smirk twisted, and grew into a wicked grin. "I sent him to _Apokolips_! He and Darkseid should get along famously, don't you think? Just imagine it, the embodiment of uncontrollable chaotic destruction and a fascistic overlord who has to have everything in its perfectly ordered place!"

After that, neither hero could get anything further from him, and they left to facilitate his transport to a properly-equipped detention center. Meanwhile, he began to laugh to himself, continuously.

About four minutes after the pair had departed, a small bald man, wearing a huge pair of spectacles, entered the room.

Through the wall.

"Ah, Dr. Sivana," Warp greeted him, the laughter stopping instantly. "I thank you for living up to your end of the bargain. I trust everything went as planned?"

The world's wickedest scientist nodded. "Naturally." LaSalle's long laughter had set off the trigger hidden in one of his false teeth, broadcasting a signal to Sivana that he was ready for pick-up.

"And the teleportation barrier?"

"That was invented to stop movement between dimensions. My own special formula for phasing through matter keeps me strictly in this dimension. It was no impediment at all, and thankfully the Justice League never stopped to consider that someone might simply phase through the Earth's crust into their basement." Advancing forward, the doctor pulled a small kit from his pocket. It contained some of the most sophisticated tools on the planet, and less than fifteen seconds of work with them had freed Warp from his bonds. "Ready to go?"

"I am. Once we are free of the teleportation barrier, what is our destination?" LaSalle cracked his neck and knuckles as he rose from the chair.

"Some of our specialized bars. I understand many of our colleagues in both Gotham and Fawcett, not to mention the entire Keystone-Central Rogues' Gallery, want to buy you a drink for getting the Joker out of our hair. Metaphorical hair in my case, of course. And naturally, once they're intoxicated, they'll be much easier to talk into joining our new Monster Society Of Evil." Warp gripped Sivana's shoulder, and they exited the room through the wall, laughing all the way.

An unpredictable murderous factor removed from the equation, a world full of dark order infested with a fresh kind of chaos, opponents who might be willing to believe the potential for heroism lay within him (and, after this escape, might believe their anti-teleportation technology wouldn't work on him), comrades-in-crime buying him drinks, membership in a new, soon to be powerful team, and a grand new plan ahead.

This had been a good night.

And in a far distant corner of the continuum, a planet of nightmares was about to become acquainted with a new one, which came wearing purple…

(Author's Note: Sivana's matter-phasing formula is an invention he used back in the 1940s, and to my knowledge never again since; I decided to bring it back for this story)


End file.
